Anti-jihadist Dutch MP received 285 death threats in 2008

Dutch politicians are facing an unprecedented number of death threats. The police corps in The Hague region received 428 serious death threats against politicians last year. And 285 directly targetted anti-jihadist Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders'.

Islamic protests in London

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This is a dramatic increase from the year before, when 264 punishable death-threats were recorded against all Dutch politicians. These statistics do not include any death threats against any of the thousands of foreign diplomats and international judicial staffers of the International Criminal Court in the Dutch capitol city of The Hague - where the police have a special protection unit, the Royal and Diplomatic Security Service.

For the kind of security Wilders needs whenever he is in public anywhere, see the video above of his arrival at Heathrow airport in the United Kingdom, from where he was expelled recently.

Left wing Dutch politicians are constantly complaining in parliament about the rising cost of protecting Wilders from these very real jihadist death threats: the budget for the 2006 protection of Wilders handled 145 protection orders in 2006 - in 2005 there were 110. The service's entire budget for 2007 - which includes the assignment to protect Wilders 24/7 -- was 34 million Euros. That's about 40-million Canadian Dollars.

Police said that 304 of last year's 428 death-threat reports against all of the country's politicians moreover were of such a serious nature that they were processed into official crime reports, on the basis of which the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) took action in the law courts against such individuals.

Of these, a full 170 were transferred to another police corps first for further investigation, and The Hague's police processed the other 134. How many of this suspects were arrested and prosecuted is not known exactly, however only last month, three men, all of Moroccan extraction, were tried for threatening to kill Wilders.See

Police in The Hague, being the seat of parliament as well as the seat of the UN's International Criminal Court of Justice, receive the bulk of threat-reports from threatened politicians.

This corps set up a special Threatened Politicians Team (TBP) after politicians such as the murdered Pim Fortuyn were demonised and targetted for death threats.

Fatwa against Wilders

Public Prosecutor Nicole Vogelenzang who handles these threats to politicians, says the increase was mainly caused by the special team which had to be set up to protect Wilders. He, together with now self-exiled Dutch MP Hirsi Ali needed special protection 24/7 after a Fatwa, an islamist order to kill them, was issued four years ago. This death-order was attached to the body of murdered Dutch cineast Theo van Gogh - slaughtered in broad daylight in Amsterdam by jihadist Mohammed Bouyeri - who attached the Fatwa announcement to Van Gogh's chest with a middle-eastern 'assassin's dagger'. Bouyeri now is serving a life-long prison sentence without any parole opportunities. The Dutch State says he is an extremely dangerous man who has publicly vowed, repeatedly, that he would continue to carry out his plans to kill the anti-jihadist Dutch politicians. see

Hirsi Ali fled from The Netherlands

Hirsi Ali left The Netherlands after a deeply disgraceful political row in which she was kicked out of her party and from parliament by her liberal party, the VVD (Party for Freedom and Democracy). She had allegedly 'lied' on her immigration documents because she had not added one of her Somalian tribe's long list of names to the document. Then-Home Affairs Minister Rita Verdonk then cancelled her Dutch citizenship and her passport - whereupon the Dutch government refused to pay for her protection any longer, forcing her into exile.

She now works at a think-tank in Washington, D.C. in the United States. Geert Wilders also left the VVD and formed his own political party during this episode. The VVD party now is bleeding voters to his party and he has reached a high level of popularity among Dutch voters, according to the latest top voters' poll.

Wilders also receives so many death-threats of mostly jihadist origin, he says, that it is impossible for him to keep making separate reports in each case. So he's allowed to 'save up' all his hate-mails and other threats and delivers them once a week to The Hague police as a package.

Additionally, Wilders and other threatened politicians do not have to go to a police station themselves, but can authorise somebody else to go on their behalf. In the Netherlands criminals generally can be prosecuted only if the victim files an official police report in person. see

Dhimmi-behaviour

There is a lot of ' jihadist-speech' encouraging 'dhimmi-behaviour' floating around which directly targets Dutch politicians on the internet. One of the worst ones is maintained by Turkish-born Ertan Kilic who runs the website Cyber Djihad / under the blog-name Rametullah. And it's all perfectly legal: former Home Affairs minister Rita Verdonk had tried to get the man off the internet by launching hate-speech charges against him after Theo van Gogh 's murder - mainly because he had placed Geert Wilder's private address on-line. Kilic claimed in court that he all wrote this purely as a 'huge joke, all just satire' and said it was his right to do so under the Dutch freedom of speech amendments in its constitution. The court dismissed the charges. He's still online and drawing a huge readership each month.